Shortly after 9/11, a strange, frenzied linguistic debate seemed to leap, almost fully formed, into the public discourse. At issue was whether the terrorist attacks should be considered "criminal acts" or "acts of war." Arrayed on one side were diplomatically cautious liberals and Europeans, who thought the "crime" nomenclature would keep moderate Muslim nations on board and better prepare the public for the conflict ahead; they were joined by legal scholars who warned the domestic and international criminal justice system was better suited to this kind of twilight struggle. On the other side stood a group of conservative analysts who deemed the "war" locution a crucial strategic and historic choice.
Though argument continued throughout the fall, in a sense the dice were loaded. The Bush administration was reading from the "war" script from (literally) day one; the media and the public, meanwhile, were raging for retaliation. Liberals like TAP's Anne-Marie Slaughter were correct to say that the long-term fight against Al Qaeda will look nothing like war as we have known it; yet phase one in Afghanistan felt like war at its most familiar. And so "war" -- the definition -- came.
Now, however, every week brings fresh evidence of the heavy costs of liberal acquiescence to the term's casual use. The latest example is Bush's 2003 "wartime" budget proposal, which would dramatically redirect the country's fiscal stance and budgetary priorities. It would freeze or slash spending on social programs and traditional infrastructure across the board, all to make way for a quadruple increase in military spending and a new round of tax cuts (sorry, "economic security"). The war on terrorism will also, if Karl Rove has his way, take back the Senate in 2002 and reelect Bush in 2004; it gives Dick Cheney the right -- no, the obligation -- to withhold records from the GAO; and it may even reinvigorate Bush's flagging "faith-based" initiative (now dubbed "armies of compassion").
"War" as a Republican political ploy is taking off in all directions. But "war" in its original packaging -- the way it was sold in so many loud editorials last fall -- is crumbling to pieces. The recent uproar over the Geneva Convention status of the Al Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay serves as a case in point. Bush may be right about the detainees' status; but this very fact proves that his earlier bellicosity was off base.
We went to "war" against hateful fanatics who never played by the rules of combat and explicitly violated the Geneva Convention by targeting civilians. Now, in war's afterglow, that Convention also stipulates that POWs should be set free with the cessation of open hostilities between the combatants. When it comes to the prisoners in Guantanamo, this is patently absurd; they should be put on trial. Yet the Bush administration wants it both ways -- yes to war in Afghanistan, no to post-war arrangements in Cuba. More than any informed disagreement about the Geneva Convention, reaction to this double standard explains the international uproar over Guantanamo.
Another arena where the war framework has failed us is the search for Osama bin Laden. After several months of billion-dollar-a-day bombings, we're now right back where we were before 9/11 -- reliant upon a widely connected global law enforcement network rather than the 10th Mountain Division.
Unfortunately, conservatives spent much of the fall maligning law enforcement style solutions. In September, Lawrence Kaplan of The New Republic lamented: "Alas, law enforcement's reach isn't always so long. While FBI agents and other government investigators operate freely in the United States, they can't do the same abroad." Yet the person who handed George Bush the briefing book that became the bible of the retaliation campaign in Afghanistan was CIA director George Tenet, whose organization has plenty of experience hunting down international criminals abroad.
From another angle, Daniel Pipes, in a Washington Post op-ed titled "War, Not Crimes: Time for a Paradigm Shift," argued that a criminal justice approach would mean "focusing on the arrest and trial of the dispensable characters who actually carry out violent acts, leaving the funders, planners, organizers, and commanders of terrorism to continue their work unscathed." But this is nonsense. If you hire a thug to kill your wife, the U.S. justice system does not consider you outside its purview: You are charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and probably sentenced to life. It's the same with terrorism.
Similar difficulties plague the notion that we can always hold nations accountable for supporting terrorism. Again in The New Republic, Kaplan noted: "What the United States ran up against this week wasn't a group of criminals but a creed -- an animus toward the United States based on specific political grievances." Yet a creed is not a state, and going forward, apportioning blame between individual actors and their states and cultures will grow increasingly difficult. Holding Afghanistan responsible for Al Qaeda was an easy, exceptional case, both because of the Taliban's unquestioned allegiance to Al Qaeda and because we had no further stake in our relationship with the regime. Holding Saudi Arabia or Indonesia -- both key strategic allies on a number of fronts -- similarly responsible will require an entirely different approach.
Obviously, the U.S. military will still play a vital role in the global fight against terrorism in the years ahead. In particular, we should expect to hear of more special ops missions and Predator drones equipped with Hellfire missiles (both of which, not incidentally, were active in the hunt for bin Laden before 9/11). But even these activities can be coordinated with broader international law enforcement strategies.
The invocation of "war" is growing increasingly inadequate against the terrorist threat and increasingly cynical on the domestic agenda. Bush needs to explore other, perhaps more effective alternatives, and stop using the military as his political crutch. Now that we've found the resolve for decisive action against terrorism, the choice between a military or law enforcement campaign may be a false one. Both areas will be invigorated by post-9/11 demands, and both will be necessary for the fight.